Richie Murphy maps out Ulster summer plan to ‘come back stronger’ after season to forget

After losing 11 of their 18 games domestically it was Ulster’s lowest-ever league finish – with only Zebre and the Dragons finishing below Murphy’s men.

The former European Cup winners failed to qualify to play in the competition for the first time since the tournament’s inception 31 years ago.

Ulster finished the season with a 47-19 defeat in Edinburgh on Friday, a fourth consecutive league reversal with only bottom-of-the-table Dragons conceding more points.

“We need to front up to them and we need to build a plan around how we close that gap between us and some of the teams at the top end of the league,” said Murphy. “It feels now, at this moment in time, like we're a long way off the top eight.

“In reality, a couple of games early on in the season, if we could have turned them around, it would have given us a great chance to finish off the season in a better position than we are...ultimately, we have to own our performances.

“It hasn't been easy but obviously some lads moving on, one or two new signings, we’re still hoping to be able to announce maybe one other in the coming days.

“Going into this summer, I suppose there are certain elements of our game that we're just not accurate enough at..this gives us a little bit of time just to take a breath, try to fix some of those errors, take some of those errors out of a game and be technically a bit stronger in certain elements of the game in and around our breakdown, in and around our contact zone and come back stronger next year.”

The Edinburgh game was a microcosm of Ulster’s season as Murphy’s men proved competitive for periods but could put in an 80-minute performance and lost the second half 28-5.

“I thought there was loads of effort and endeavour from the lads, but 20-plus turnovers put us in a very difficult position,” he said. “I thought at times we defended our line really well, other times we just weren't good enough in and around that contact area.

“There's plenty to digest, but we come back here to the Hive Stadium in the second game next season and we have a lot of improvements to do.

“It's not the way we wanted to finish today and to the guys that were staying back is the hard work that's in front of us in order to be able to close the gap.

“Scored three tries, weren't quite capable of staying with Edinburgh...let's get into the summer, let's reassess what we're doing, how we're trying to do things and come back stronger.

“Twenty-plus turnovers this week, 18-plus last week...it's very hard to win games when you're giving the opposition the ball that many times.”

ULSTER: M Lowry; W Kok, J Postlethwaite, S McCloskey, Z Ward; J Murphy, N Doak; A Warwick, R Herring, T O’Toole; K Treadwell, I Henderson (captain); C Izuchukwu, N Timoney, D McCann

Replacements: T Stewart for Herring 56 mins, C Reid for Warwick 46 mins, S Wilson for O’Toole 55 mins, H Sheridan for Henderson 65 mins, J McNabney for Treadwell 61 mins, D Shanahan for Doak 56 mins , A Morgan for Murphy 62 mins, S Moore for Ward 56 mins